I never really regained by faith in religion again. If God existed and had a plan, I would have told him that this already looked like a shit plan. Sitting in my car and looking out into the empty road at night I suddenly see a few kids driving around crazy and drunk. Screaming and laughing. Waste of youth. As I watch them swirl around in their pickup truck heading towards the nearby lake I saw a faint shadow behind some tree lines.

I got out and slowly walked over towards the lake to see the pickup had stopped and the kids where now running round half-naked, heading for the lake shore. There were five of them and judging by their shadowy figures I could easily tell two were girls. But my eyes where now locked on to the shadows beyond the tree line. As I slowly walked closer, I could sense it in the air.

The moon came out behind the clouds to spill out light onto the dark earth and the kids had spotted me walking towards them and were now standing still. They were hesitant. I couldn’t see their faces clearly, but I could tell they were looking at me as their body language changed to cautious and threatening stance. I could hear the guys shouting at me while the two girls that where with them took steps back.

“What do you want man! Don’t come near or I’ll beat the shit out of you!”

“F*ck off man!”

Threats to make them brave, to conjure up what courage they had inside. I know very well what they were doing. But I looked towards the tree line, and I caught that shadow moving again. Faster than before. Guess it saw me. My footsteps become faster as I start to move quicker towards the kids. This alarmed them and now they had armed themselves with some kind of blunt weapons. Then I saw it. The shadow was now sprinting almost out of the tree line and straight towards the two girls at the back. My eyes lock on and follow as I start dashing fast. The three guys now clearly about to attack, brace themselves as they raised their weapons.

As I converge on their position, I pulled out a gun from my pocket and aimed it towards them. As soon as they saw it they started screaming and pulling back.

“WAIT! STOP MAN!”

“DON’T SHOOT!”

I ignore them as shots ring through the air and everyone starts to scream. I run past the three kids now taken back and scared out of their minds by the gun shots as they follow me with their eyes. As they do they also see the shadow moving fast towards the two girls and start screaming for them to run. But I knew it was a moment too late. The shadow had already jumped the girls and had one clutched in its hand. It was huge, may be over 7 foot with large hands that wrapped around the girl’s face in one grasp and strength enough to pick her up like a piece of stick. As I near it with the three boys now following behind, the shadowy veil is lifted and the revealed the creature. Damn, as I suspected. Huge with fangs and claws. Fury hide and gleaming yellow eyes face us under the pale moonlight. A God damn Lycanthrope. My three shots clearly did nothing to it as it turned towards us unhinged.

“What the hell is that!”

“A werewolf!? That’s real!?”

“Man, let’s get outta here!”

The boys start screaming and I smirk. Classic. I look dead on towards the Lycan in a sort of a stalemate. Both waiting for the other to make the move. As silence envelopes the scene and everything is still. I looked into the Lycan’s eyes as it stares at the gun I am holding. Somehow, I could see the smirk on its face as it takes a step forward. As if daring me to take the shot. Regular bullets can’t hurt them.

“You think you can take this one?”

I smirk back at it as I spit out the words between my smirks. I know it won’t answer back. They can’t talk once they’ve changed. At least that’s what I’ve been told and I haven’t met one that differed. Yet they could understand human language. Must be leftovers from what they use to be.

The Lycan snarls, showing its fangs. I could see the hand still wrapped around the girl’s face tightening as she twitches a bit more. Good, looks like she’s still alive. I look back at the Lycan and stares it down.

“You want to test the metal? Okay, let’s see who comes on top.”

One single shot rings through the silent night sky. The Lycan looks at me and I could see it smirking. Its jaws open as if laughing, taunting me, saying I was a fool.

But then… it’s eyes starts to widen as his grip on the girl loosens and she falls to the ground. I could see the Lycan take a few steps back as it tries to grasp what was happening. In its chest there was a bullet hole that was spewing blood. The entrance wound darkens quickly as if burnt and the Lycan starts to wail in pain.

“3 Regular and then, Moonlight endowed silver bullets.”

I blurt out raising one side of my lip. The Lycan now clearly angered tries to take a swing but crumbles forward instead. Loss of motor function and next sight. Then… I hear a loud thump as the huge Lycan drops to the ground completely and starts to burn. Fire engulfed the body and soon… nothing was left but a pile of ashes.

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“What…. The hell was that man!?”

I turn my head to look at the boys. They were still holding onto those bats. I give them a grin. Three more shots ring through the night as I drop three more on the ground. Fire ensues leaving 3 more piles of ashes.

“Classic Lycan deception…”

I turn around to face the two girls. The other girl was now next to the one dropped by the Lycan and they both stand up. Clearly shook.

“Thank you…”

The girl said and started to walk up to me. I look at them as they came up in a friendly and thankful manner.

Two more shots ring as the girl scream and fall. They burn up quickly, turning to ash. Too calm after and ordeal like that. Fanged teeth and skin turning pale under the moonlight. I didn’t have to think hard on what I was dealing with here.

“Vampires and Lycans… now I’ve seen it all.”

The changed Lycan must have caught the vampire scent. After all, this was near to Lycan territory. But big mistake crossing the border into human realm. I walk back the way I came to find my parked car where I left it. As I get in the radio on the passenger side starts buzzing.

[Jack, are you done? Is everything okay?]

“Yeah. Send a crew to clean up the place.”

[I’m sending cleanup right now]

Beth, who was now my operator, called out over the radio. How she every knew I was back in the car gets me every time. I swear there’s some kind of surveillance device I don’t know of inside the car. I headed back to camp that night. Should have waited a bit. But what’s done is done, I guess.

As I arrived back at the camp, I was met by a more than usually pissed Bradley Martius. A tall well-built old man in his early 60s, Caucasian maybe around 5foot 6 with silver lined dark brown hair and beard. He oversaw camp operations in this sector. Everything about his demeanor screamed ex-military. Sometimes he reminded me of my drill sergeant back in boot camp. I hated that man. Bradley looked at me with concern. His scar that ran from his right temple down to his lower cheek shivered and twitched as the old man tried to muster composure to speak calmly as he could.

“God damn it Jack! How many times do I have to tell you to keep operations low profile!”

“No one saw me.”

I answered casually, pointing out the fact that I was not seen nor recorded as far as I’m concerned. Even if I had been spotted or recorded, the cleanup team would have taken care of it. But Bradley was clearly not buying it. He looked at me with a smirk and a low-key look of sarcasm in his facial expression.

“Yes, I’m sure everyone was in their houses calling the God damn cops about multiple gun shots that dropped five people….”

“Lycans and vampires Bradley, they ain’t people.”

I quickly corrected Bradley cutting in and making it blatantly obvious I had no concerns nor care towards his sentiments. Bradley’s face turned red real fast. But, then he sighed a deep and agonizing sigh. He shook his head and faced me one last time and started to walk off towards his office. I shrugged and started to make my way to my room. Just then I heard Bradley shout behind me.

“You’re going to get yourself and all of us in trouble one of these days with your cowboy antics jack. You mark my words.”

I didn’t turn back. Just shrugged once again and kept walking back to my room. As I turned around the corner, I saw Beth leaning against the wall with her arms crossed.

“Ease dropping again I see.”

She looked straight into my eyes and just stared. Typical Beth behavior when she does not approve of something. I shook my head and started to walk past her.

“He called them ‘people’…”

I said in a shallow and silent grunt without turning towards her as I kept walking on. I don’t know why but I always felt the need to express an excuse for my behavior to Beth whenever she looked at me like that. It was annoying but somehow it made me feel a little bit at ease inside.

“You know he didn’t mean it like that.”

Beth leaned away from the wall and started to approach towards me. She put her hand on my shoulder in a gesture of comfort. I didn’t respond. Just started to walk off again. Beth’s hand slid away from my shoulder as she stood there looking after me as I walked off.

That night as I lay in bed I thought about my life thus far since the incident with the ‘skin walkers’. It was troubling to realize that I had been completely settling into this new life with new people. Just casual, like everything was normal. I had adapted to the constant torment and anger that the reason behind them had completely faded away, while only the emotional byproduct remained.

This was not right. I should have died. I should have been with Sarah by now. But then again, I may never be with her even after death. I had already wronged so many that my soul is surely damned. But, if I am to be sent to the burning pits of hell. Then I shall live out the remainder of what life I have left to take as much of these vile hell spawns as possible with me. We shall all burn in hell as I gain what little comfort I can from watching them burn in agony.

I slowly slipped into sleep as the very notion of hell and agony lullabied me. The screams of mu imaginary hell roared and twisted as wicked and demonic entities laughed and giggled. Red and black. Burning and cutting. Laughter. Those sinister and daunting laughter. Ringing in my head. But then I hear something. A muffled yet familiar voice. I couldn’t make out what the voice was saying, but it sounded urgent and scared. The voice leads me out as I start to come around back to the dark reality that was my room. The voice becomes louder accompanied with a constant banging.

“Jack! Wake up Jack!”

Someone was slamming at the door. I snapped out of what ever state I was in and started to realize a loud muffled noise. As I regained my senses, the sound became louder and more apparent. I realized it was the emergency alarm. We were under attack. I sprung from my bed and dashed for the door. As I opened it I saw a terrified Beth as she spilled into the room. I quickly backed away to head towards my cabinet and gear up. I heard Beth rant on about something. She was in shock and clearly not in her right mind. I can hear the fear and shock tremble in her voice. I turn around to grab both her shoulders and steadied her firmly.

“Beth, calm down. What is going on?”

“Jack, they’re here! They’ve attacked the camp. They’ve never came anywhere close like this before. I mean we knew they were spying on the camp every now and then but it was from a distance and….”

Beth started to rant on again. I gave her shoulders a firm yet slight shake. She suddenly stopped and looked at me as I looked back into her eyes. A minute had gone by maybe and Beth’s eyes deepened as slight calmness returned.

“Beth… who are they?”

“The Lycans Jack. We’re being attacked by a horde of Lycans.”

“Lycans!?”

Then I thought about the incident earlier. Did that incident lead to this? Was there something in those Lycans I dropped that would rally and entire pack? Maybe or maybe not we had no way of finding out right now. But one thing was for sure.

“Beth, we got to get out of the building and into the open.”

“All the entrances are sealed and crawling with Lycans.”

I quickly stuck my neck out the front door and peered into the hallway. Dark with minimum lights. I heard gun fire and people screaming against howling from a distance. It sounded muffled that allowed me to deduce the incident was happening outside the building. The building was silent and felt empty. That’s never a good sign.

“Okay. We got to get to the basement level to access the emergency escape tunnels. That will lead us out to the other side of the camp and into the mountain pass.”

“Jack, that mountain pass leads straight into …”

“It’s our only option right now.”

I convinced Beth to head to the basement and into the escape tunnels that connected to the outside of the camp. I grabbed my handgun and tucked it behind me as I reached under the pillow to pullout the shotgun I was hiding.

“Let’s go.”

I took the lead as Beth closely followed behind with a handgun of her own. As we quietly made our way down the hallway towards the stairs Beth pointed out that the elevators were on the opposite direction.

“The elevators are not safe. We’ll be trapped inside a box if a Lycan happens to be waiting on the other side of the door.”

I pointed out as Beth nodded. We continued down to the end of the hallway as we lost light fast. The emergency staircase leading down to the basement was dark. Emergency lights were on but for some reason they weren’t able to illuminate the staircase adequately as they were intended.

“Stay close and watch out for anything.”

“Be careful Jack.”

We continued our way down the rabbit hole. As darkness slowly swallowed us whole.